Pull It Together

This week we chat with my girl Bligh Voth the morning after her surprise bachelorette. Bligh is an actor/singer/writer originally from Washington, D.C. now living in New York City. She is currently the female standby on the first national tour of the Tony Award winning musical, The Bands Visit. Bligh spends her free time running races, chartering buses from NYC to DC for marches and protests, and cooking. 

As creatives we often have a hard time living in the middle. I always say, throw me in a crisis and I’ll be great, but boy do I have a hard time navigating the in-between. This week we chat being addicted to the extremes, romanticizing self destruction and debunking the narrative of the struggling artist.

If you've ever wanted to sit in on a coffee date with me and my girlfriends...this is it!

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We sit down today with Mel Vandersluis - a content creator and photographer in the travel/lifestyle space. Over the past 4 years Mel has worked with tourism boards and hotels to help bring the stories of these remote locations to life for her audience. 

Mel shares how travel allowed her to get to know herself more intimately. She shares how her mindset has shifted over the years and the need to recharge and establish boundaries while on the road. We also talk BURNOUT folks. Mel speaks vulnerably to how she worked through a recent low point and turned to gratitude and curiosity to find her way back to herself.

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This week we chat with Susan Brinson from House of Brinson/Studio Brinson. Susan has really made it her mission to slow down and find beauty in the everyday moments. She talks about how the simple act of taking more time with something, can make it feel like a luxury (an idea I’m sure we can all get behind nowadays).

Susan is the perfect combination of formally educated and self taught. After 12 years in the advertising industry as design director Susan started photographing with her husband Will behind the scenes for their blog. In 2014, they ditched convention and began directing and photographing together commercially. Different approaches create a unique shared vision.

Susan shares about their life-changing choice to leave New York City and move to the Hudson Valley, the on-going renovation project of their dilapidated mansion - Stony Ford, and how she balances her commercial work with the demands of renovating and sharing their home in front of an audience.

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We kick off Pull It Together 2.0 with French award-winning photographer and animal advocate Sophie Gamand. Sophie travels the world photographing shelter dogs to help bring awareness to their fate, and help them get adopted. Her most known series are Wet Dog and Pit Bull Flower Power. Since 2010 Sophie’s focus has been unpacking the relationship between human and dog, but Sophie is a true renaissance woman and has lived many creative lives from opera singer to magazine curator to embroiderer. Throughout our conversation she shares how following her fear lead to her to her most poignant and powerful work.

Sophie also shares her personal journey with therapy and how she has handled the conflict of needing to heal herself, but feeling as though her art would suffer if she was no longer in that dark place. We discuss how she used art to address her demons and work through past traumas. We learn that creativity doesn’t come from pain, but comes from our ability to connect. 

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